-
Florence Price: A New Chapter For An Undervalued Composer
Advocates of American classical music have often complained that there is a whole generation of mid-20th century symphonic composers whose work has been unjustly neglected. It includes figures like Roy Harris, Charles Ives, Walter Piston, Roger Sessions, and William Schuman, to name a few who were active from roughly 1930 to 1960 and who now rarely…
-
Leonard Slatkin on His Final Bow at the Detroit Symphony
On May 25, I attended the first of three final programs that Leonard Slatkin had programmed for his 10th and final season as music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. But Slatkin wasn’t there. The 73-year-old conductor was forced to withdraw from the concerts in order to undergo a heart-bypass operation (he’s reportedly recovering well).
-
New World Symphony, Witnessed Indoors and Out
One of the more striking design aspects of the New World Center, the performance and educational facility in Miami Beach, FL, is the capacity for its resident New World Symphony to beam concerts to the surrounding community via its 7,000-square-foot projection wall.
-
New York Philharmonic Can’t Get Enough of Mahler
The New York Philharmonic is entering a bold new era for fans of Gustav Mahler and other late-Romantic symphonists, if the opening-night gala concert, led by Jaap van Zweden, was any indication. The Sept. 19 program featured Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, performed days after van Zweden led the same work at the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, where…
-
Orchestras Hire Youthful Conductors to Stay Relevant. Is that Enough?
What can symphony orchestras learn from “Mozart in the Jungle,” the Amazon series featuring a dashing young conductor from Mexico who replaces the aging music director of an orchestra, in a bid to invigorate the stodgy institution? In this Slate article from Feb. 4, 2016, I look at various factors that contribute to an orchestra’s…
-
Seattle Symphony Stages Concert to Celebrate Immigrants
The Seattle Symphony staged a kind of protest concert on Wednesday night, featuring composers and performers from the seven Muslim majority countries that Donald Trump has sought to bar from entering the United States.
-
Eight Takeaways from Classical Music in 2016
In a year in which the 2016 presidential campaign impacted all corners of public life in the U.S., classical music often served as a diversion or even a refuge for many listeners. But musicians didn’t live in a vacuum either, as several news stories demonstrated.
-
Three Orchestra Strikes: Considering Artistic Health
As the fall 2016 concert season begins, the musicians of three big-city orchestras are on strike: the Philadelphia Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony and Fort Worth Symphony.
-
5 Takeaways from Classical Music Virtual Reality Projects
The classical music field has had an on-and-off relationship with online gaming and personal technology. Back in 2007, users of the Nintendo Wii could play a new virtual reality-type game called the Virtual Maestro, which turned the Wii controller (which resembled a TV remote) into a baton to manipulate a digital orchestra’s tempo. Before that, there was the Concert Companion, a pre-smartphone…
-
New Jersey Arts Groups Grapple With Changing Audiences
Working in the shadow of a major city is a challenge faced by suburban arts organizations across the United States, but especially in New Jersey, where New York City and Philadelphia act as strong magnets for culture lovers. The state’s opera companies have particularly struggled to stay afloat, not only in recent times, but for well over a decade.